Sue Books: Is that A) the name of a person, or B) what politicians in Virginia are trying to do to censor books from bookstores? (Hint: It's not A.)

thefire.org
A weird state law lets Virginians sue books. Politicians are using it to dictate what we can read....
FIRE and the Woodhull Freedom Foundation filed an amici curiae brief with a Virginia state court tasked with determining if two books are legally obscene.

A weird state law lets Virginians sue books. Politicians are using it to dictate what we can read.

FIRE and the Woodhull Freedom Foundation fight to turn the page on censorship.

by Will Creeley

July 26, 2022

Book bans seek to enlist the power of the state to dictate what each of us and our families may or may not read — and thus are sharply at odds with the First Amendment and our pluralist democracy.

That’s the message delivered by FIRE and the Woodhull Freedom Foundation in an amici curiae brief filed today with a Virginia state court tasked with determining whether two award-winning books, Maia Kobabe’s “Gender Queer” and Sarah J. Maas’ “A Court of Mist and Fury,” are legally obscene.

In May, two Virginia politicians filed a petition against the books in Virginia Beach Circuit Court, seeking declarations of obscenity that, pursuant to state law, would prohibit bookstores from selling either work. Their request invoked a rarely-used state law that allows Virginians to sue books and to compel their publishers and authors to defend them in court. After a retired state judge found “probable cause” that the works are “obscene for unrestricted viewing by minors,” the petitioners sought temporary restraining orders to bar commercial distribution of the book.

In today’s brief, FIRE and the Woodhull Freedom Foundation argue that neither book comes close to constituting obscenity as defined for minors under longstanding state and federal precedent. The books “will not appeal to or have value to every audience,” we recognize, but the First Amendment only requires that the books have “value to an audience” — and both plainly do. ... Moreover, FIRE and Woodhull argue, book bans are antithetical to the First Amendment and the pluralist values it protects:

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